White Collar Crime

THE MOST disappointing aspect of the new crime bill is that Congress has not set aside any money to punish those who have committed white-collar crimes.Since white-collar crime is now growing faster than blue-collar crime, you would think that some provisions would have been made to deal with the problem.Stephanie Ross, a white-collar crime consultant, said that while it is hoped that the new bill can reduce street crimes, Congress has thrown in the towel about stopping criminal activity on Wall Street and in various halls of government.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, according to current and former bureau officials. The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. Current and former officials say the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance because of the nation's economic woes.

While violent crime in Howard County showed only a slight increase last year, the number of juvenile and white-collar crimes shot up 1996, according to annual crime statistics released by county police yesterday.Violent crimes, defined as murder, rape and robbery, rose sharply in the first half of 1996 -- 77 percent above the same period in 1995 -- but the rate of increase slowed drastically in the second half of year.Final statistics show an increase of 2.3 percent, a rise of only 14 incidents -- from 608 in 1995 to 622 in 1996.

Day and night, the crime blogs are on patrol. Some of these bloggers are victims' advocates. Some are criminal-justice insiders with stories to tell. Some are merely fascinated with seedy tales from the dark side of society. But they all seem to share a similar passion for exposing the guilty, protecting the innocent and analyzing all the legal issues in between. This growing set in the blogosphere is like a 21st-century neighborhood watch with a global scope. Cross that legal line, and you're likely to end up on one of these blogs.

Anne Arundel County will get its first prosecutor dedicated to white-collar crime next month.The state's attorney's office won a $54,000 federal grant to combat embezzlement, fraud and theft schemes, which have ballooned along with the economy. Last year, prosecutors tackled 260 economic crimes.The grant follows several unsuccessful attempts by State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee to get a white-collar crime unit for his office funded in the county budget.Clifford Stoddard, a two-year veteran of the office, will specialize in the investigation and prosecution of economic crimes.

On our opposite page James Traub, who has written an exhaustive study of the Wedtech Corp., notes that practically everyone being prosecuted for crimes connected to that sinkhole of corruption is managing to elude the law by hook or crook. Traub attributes this to what he calls a "tender solicitude" of a Reagan-dominated federal appellate judiciary toward white-collar crime.It is noteworthy, perhaps, that among those who are not getting off on appeal are the Mitchell brothers, Clarence III and Michael, who were convicted of Wedtech-related crimes and sentenced to prison terms.

The U.S. attorney for Maryland has restructured the office, eliminating the criminal and civil divisions and creating six teams that will focus on priorities she has set.Effective next month, the new teams of federal prosecutors will concentrate on violent crime, drugs, environmental crime, white-collar crime, general crime and civil and financial litigation.Lynne Battaglia, the U.S. attorney, said the new structure will allow prosecutors to work together in smaller groups in targeted areas, and also permit them to more easily meet with investigators working the cases.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, according to current and former bureau officials. The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. Current and former officials say the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance because of the nation's economic woes.

Frank Curran, the new investigator for the Howard County State's Attorney's Office, loves paper."There are two types of people in jail," he says. "People who write things down and people who talk too much."Bring on those mind-boggling ledger sheets and bank records that defy logic. Curran can plow through them and determine if there's a crime between the columns.His hiring is part of a push by the county prosecutor's office to crack down on white-collar crime -- an area that law enforcement officials suspect will grow along with Howard's population and advances in technology.

By Michael James and Marcia Myers and Michael James and Marcia Myers,Sun Staff Writers | September 15, 1994

A 19-year FBI veteran aiming to go after the violent drug trades in Baltimore and Prince George's County has been named to head the agency's Maryland-Delaware field office, authorities announced yesterday.Timothy P. McNally, 47, heads the criminal division of the FBI-Washington field office, where he oversaw the Rep. Dan Rostenkowski corruption investigation and most recently the probe of the bizarre plane crash on the White House lawn.Mr. McNally expects to begin his job in Woodlawn in mid-October.

Getting Americans outraged over corporate skulduggery? Easy. Winning high-profile convictions? Much harder. Eleven days of deliberation haven't been enough for jurors to decide whether the former chief executive of HealthSouth Corp. is guilty of fraud; they left yesterday without a decision. The Tyco International Ltd. case - with its revelations of lavish personal spending on the company dime - is back in deliberation again after a mistrial. Last week the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of accounting firm Arthur Andersen of Enron infamy, and now former Credit Suisse First Boston banker Frank Quattrone is appealing his obstruction of justice conviction.

Even in his final months, Gregory Dutcher was scheming, prosecutors said. The ex-cop turned con man had been doing it for years, they said, reaching across the country from his Eastern Shore base to bilk hundreds of clients out of millions of dollars. Lawsuits hadn't stopped him. After angry customers showed up at his office, he simply moved and took a new alias, according to court papers. An FBI raid and federal indictment last year hardly slowed him down, prosecutors said. But this week, authorities believed, would be the end. Dutcher, 46, had agreed to plead guilty to some of the 26 charges against him. He was supposed to show up in Baltimore's federal court yesterday to do so. Instead, on Saturday, he killed himself in his multimillion-dollar Easton home - an unexpected ending to what had been one of the largest white-collar criminal enterprises run from the Shore.

Dale P. Kelberman, a longtime state and federal prosecutor who sent two Annapolis lobbyists to prison and won key convictions during the savings and loan scandal, is leaving the U.S. attorney's office to head the white-collar criminal defense division at Miles & Stockbridge, the law firm said yesterday. Kelberman, 53, of Severna Park will take over the partner position vacated this month when Baltimore attorney Richard D. Bennett became a federal judge. Kelberman, who started his legal career in 1974 with a clerkship in the Baltimore state's attorney's office and remained at the government's table for nearly three decades, said yesterday that he was approached by Bennett this year about the job and called it "a perfect fit."

Maryland's U.S. attorney took over the office with a pledge to crack down on white-collar crime and public corruption, but his most visible mark in the past year has been against violent crime, a reflection of Baltimore's troubled streets. Under U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio, federal prosecutors repeatedly stepped in last year to handle the city's worst violent crimes, bringing charges in such high-profile cases as the arson that killed an East Baltimore family, the deadly carjacking of a Glen Burnie pharmacist and the kidnapping and killing of an 8-year-old city girl.

IT'S NEARLY impossible to keep up with all the developments of the likes of Enron when such high crimes and misdemeanors fly across the business pages with dizzying regularity. Here at Western Correctional Institution and, no doubt, in other prisons across the country, developments in these seedy tales are being watched with great interest. It's not in hope of learning a new trick that we watch. Forgery, fraud, bait-and-switch, tax evasion and evidence destruction are things we all understand here.

Thomas M. DiBiagio, a white-collar crime defense attorney who spent nine years prosecuting federal crimes in Baltimore, is the White House's apparent choice to be Maryland's next U.S. attorney. The nomination could occur as early as this week. If confirmed, DiBiagio, 40, would become the only Republican in a statewide post in Maryland and the point man for President Bush's justice priorities, including an emphasis on federal prosecution of gun crimes. DiBiagio declined to comment yesterday.

Maryland's U.S. attorney took over the office with a pledge to crack down on white-collar crime and public corruption, but his most visible mark in the past year has been against violent crime, a reflection of Baltimore's troubled streets. Under U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio, federal prosecutors repeatedly stepped in last year to handle the city's worst violent crimes, bringing charges in such high-profile cases as the arson that killed an East Baltimore family, the deadly carjacking of a Glen Burnie pharmacist and the kidnapping and killing of an 8-year-old city girl.

Getting Americans outraged over corporate skulduggery? Easy. Winning high-profile convictions? Much harder. Eleven days of deliberation haven't been enough for jurors to decide whether the former chief executive of HealthSouth Corp. is guilty of fraud; they left yesterday without a decision. The Tyco International Ltd. case - with its revelations of lavish personal spending on the company dime - is back in deliberation again after a mistrial. Last week the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of accounting firm Arthur Andersen of Enron infamy, and now former Credit Suisse First Boston banker Frank Quattrone is appealing his obstruction of justice conviction.

Anne Arundel County will get its first prosecutor dedicated to white-collar crime next month.The state's attorney's office won a $54,000 federal grant to combat embezzlement, fraud and theft schemes, which have ballooned along with the economy. Last year, prosecutors tackled 260 economic crimes.The grant follows several unsuccessful attempts by State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee to get a white-collar crime unit for his office funded in the county budget.Clifford Stoddard, a two-year veteran of the office, will specialize in the investigation and prosecution of economic crimes.

Frank Curran, the new investigator for the Howard County State's Attorney's Office, loves paper."There are two types of people in jail," he says. "People who write things down and people who talk too much."Bring on those mind-boggling ledger sheets and bank records that defy logic. Curran can plow through them and determine if there's a crime between the columns.His hiring is part of a push by the county prosecutor's office to crack down on white-collar crime -- an area that law enforcement officials suspect will grow along with Howard's population and advances in technology.